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Right at home, the impressive gown stands proud in an East Avenue mansion.

Created to honor this year’s 100th anniversary of women getting the right to vote in New York state, the silk dress features 20 panels. Each honors a different woman (or, in some cases, a group of women).

There’s opera’s Renée Fleming, there’s engineering’s Kate Gleason; there’s Susan B. Anthony, the woman who led the suffrage movement. And there are the Top Free Seven, women who challenged a law that discriminated against women.

Nuchjarin Pareeratanasomporn(Photo: Provided photo)

On display at the headquarters of The American Association of University Women of Rochester at 494 East Ave., Rochester, the gown was created by students and faculty at the Rochester Institute of Technology and the College at Brockport.

“As a student and a designer, this project allowed me to integrate my skills, experience, and education to create an amazing artwork,” says Nuchjarin Pareeratanasomporn, who finished her graduate work at RIT this spring.

Professors Marla Schweppe, Shu Chang, Christine Heusner from RIT and Gail Argetsinger from Brockport contributed to the project. “We had a really good time doing it,” says Argetsinger, an associate professor and costume designer at Brockport.

Different printing techniques are used on the different panels. Thus, one panel might react when touched, another might change color when exposed to water.

A closer look at some of the panels on the dress honoring pioneering women.(Photo: Jim Memmott)

The gown is very much a work in progress, as more panels are being created to honor more women.

“We discussed and then selected from among hundreds of high-impact women.” Pareeratanasomporn says. “All of them are amazing. It is hard to tell which stories are my favorite. However, they all inspired me and motivated me to live and work with my passion and follow my dream.”

Because the panels will be changed, the gown we see today may not be the gown we see later on, but it will always make the same point, that Rochester has been blessed by the presence of a wide variety of talented and brave women.

Some of these women, like Abby Wambach and Harriet Tubman, are well known. Others are not so well-known. Elizabeth Baker, who standardized patterns for menswear in the 19th century, is honored, as are scientists, including Esther Conwell, a pioneering researcher at Xerox Corp. and a professor at the University of Rochester.

Panel about the Top Free Seven on a dress that celebrates pioneering women.(Photo: Jim Memmott)

Led by Mary Lou Schloss and Ramona Santorelli, the Top Free Seven made news in 1986 when the women stripped to the waist to protest a law that allowed men, but not women, to go topless in public. After years of legal wrangling, in 1992 the state’s Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the women.

The elegant gown honoring all of these women fits in at the mansion built for the Perkins family in 1906. Its features — a mahogany staircase, chandeliers, and servants’ headquarters — whisper Downton Abbey.

But the members of the American Association of University Women, which were given the mansion in 1946, have added touches that would make Susan B. Anthony proud. Among them is room devoted to women’s efforts to get the vote.

Remarkable Rochesterians

The name of this woman featured on the dress should be included on the list of Remarkable Rochesterians that can be found at RocRoot.com.

Vicki Hanson(Photo: Provided photo)

Vicki Hanson: A native of Scotland and a leader in worldwide efforts to make computers accessible for people with disabilities and for older adults, she joined the faculty at Rochester Institute of Technology in 2013 and is a distinguished professor in the B. Thomas Golisano College of Computing. The president of the Association for Computing Machinery, she earlier founded and managed IBM’s Accessibility Research Group. She is also a professor at the University of Dundee in Scotland.

The gown

To make an appointment to see the dress honoring Rochester women or to obtain information about the July 23 AAUW of Rochester picnic celebrating women in New York state getting the vote, call (585) 244-8890.